


Empty House: A Fable by John Watson

by proxydialogue



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fairy Tales, M/M, implied Mycroft/Lestrade if you squint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-15
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 4,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meta-ass "Empty House" fic (i.e. Return of SH) told by John Watson through fairy tales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s the skinny:
> 
> This story is actually meant to appear in blog form. So it does  
> —http://thetestimonyofjohnwatson.tumblr.com/
> 
> That is part of the reason why the chapters are so short. I wanted to write a story so meta it was disgusting and there are parts of the story that play with the blog format. However blog form is hard to share and I’m the type of writer who likes to be stroked (or critiqued) and told how talented she is (or isn’t). So I’m breaking that wall rather than remaining in anonymity. 
> 
> That said. You can read the full story here as it comes out. But the blog will be updated more often (everyday at 2:30 am London time 10:20 pm EST if all goes well) for the simple reason that I can write ahead and queue the posts so my little blog ghost posts them for me while I do things like sleep and eat and work. I will catch up the AO3 periodically. 
> 
> The lesson from this? Don’t experiment with new methods of storytelling. It leads only to complications. 
> 
> Also scarletjedi is the shit. Because she is my beta. And she puts up with crap like this 
> 
> Now then. Have a story.

My name is John Watson and I need to tell you a story.

I'm not as mad as they say I am. I'm not mad. And let me just say that, if people would _listen_ to their fairy tales, if people would listen at all, it wouldn't seem so impossible. 

The hero always returns. And my friend, Sherlock Holmes, for all his flaws, for all his insistences otherwise, was a hero. He didn’t just die to keep his friends safe, he let the whole world think he was the villain in order to bring down the greatest evil of our time. He was willing to go down in history as the bad guy, he was willing to be immortal, to be remembered forever as Sherlock Holmes the fraud, Sherlock Holmes the liar, just to put that bullet in Moriarty’s head. He jumped off a roof thinking he’d successfully fooled the one friend he had in the world into believing the propaganda. 

I was pissed for a long time that he even tried to make me hate him. 

Stories are unbelievably powerful things, if you can get people to listen to them. But I have to put the record straight somewhere. The problem is that this is a fairytale and people stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. 

So I won’t ask you to suspend your disbelief. I won’t even ask you to take me at my word. All I ask is this—and I’m not, it seems, even the first to ask it:

Believe. 

Believe in Sherlock Holmes.


	2. The Spider

Once there was an evil spider sitting in a web. So clever was this spider, and so intricate his web, that he never needed to catch his own flies. He lured them close with beautiful designs so that they came willingly and lay down at his feet while he sucked out their insides and left them dry. So clever was this spider that, for a long time, no one even knew his name. 

Moriarty. 

He was the spider king. At the ends of the delicate tendrils of his web dead bodies were piled almost to the sky.

Eventually the spider grew tired of the taste of flies. They were so ordinary, he thought. So boring. He wanted to eat a hero.

So with his many legs he began to pull on the strings of his web. He rose from his throne and spun some new ones. The spider made himself a beautiful face and a beautiful story. The spider spread his sticky web all through London and danced his many-legged dance. He laughed and cackled and wound his web around. 

The spider worked. And eventually, just like all the flies that had filled the spider’s belly, the hero came to him. 

But the hero was clever too and before the spider could eat him he said:

“I am just clever as you are.” 

The spider, being so successful and so well fed on blood, did not believe the hero. 

“You are just like all the others,” he answered and opened his clacking maw. “Now that I see you. I see that you are just another fly,” and he bit the hero in the throat. 

“I am nothing like a fly,” the hero insisted. He could see that if he did not kill the spider then the spider would live forever, killing and eating and spreading his evil web. “I am like you. And with me gone, there will be no one to appreciate how clever you really are.” 

The spider saw that the hero was right. He was too clever for the rest of the world. All he had left to look forward to was a lifetime of dreary flies. So the spider shot himself in the head. 

Without the spider to hold it together the web began to unravel in the breeze. But it was too late for the hero; he’d been bitten and he died of the spider’s poison.


	3. The End

There’s not much to tell about that first month. I shut myself in a one room basement flat while Britain mourned for Richard Brooke. I turned off my mobile because reporters and fans and furious clients kept ringing, and bought a new one so that my friends and family could get hold of me. I didn’t throw the old phone away. I couldn’t. Because there was at least one person who knew that number that I needed to talk to. 

If the tosser would only give up the bloody game and call me. If he would only answer when I went to his grave and shouted insensitive names at him. If he would only understand that I hadn’t been fooled by the blood all over the curb and matted in his hair. That I had seen right through the still glass of his pupils and the shattered angle of his collarbone. 

Sherlock pretended he was a lot of things, even with his friend. Sometimes especially with his friend. 

“I don’t fucking buy it,” I told the ceiling. The mirror. The skull that Mrs. Hudson dropped off for me one afternoon (along with two boxes of tea and some groceries she thought I might be neglecting). I didn’t buy the sociopath act. Or that he didn’t like Lestrade. That he hated his brother as much as all that. That he was heartless. Loveless. 

Dead. 

Every second or third day I would turn the phone on and check my missed calls and messages. Looking for that miracle. 

But it was a long time coming. (And that’s the way it is with fairy tales, isn’t it? The miracle doesn’t come until all hope is lost and everyone is sure that it’s going to be a shit ending after all. Then there is a knock at the door, a word from the shadows, a rose on the window sill.) 

It _was_ a rose, actually.


	4. The Queen

Once there was a queen named was Mycroft. He was a shrewd queen. A just queen, when he could afford to be; but also a queen who knew a great deal about necessary evils. 

It came to pass that the queen’s kingdom was threatened by the web of an evil spider. And so the queen caught the spider and had him brought in for questioning. But the spider was clever. The spider would not talk. He only smiled when the courtiers twisted his many legs. He only laughed when the queen threatened to have his head hacked off by the knights. 

_I must know his plan_. Thought the queen and asked the spider “What is it that you want?” 

“I want to hear a story about a hero,” said the spider. Because he was planning to eat the hero, which you already know. But the queen did not know this, and the hero was the queen’s little brother. 

So out of desperation the queen traded information for information and then let the spider go. 

The spider danced his many legged dance away, smiling at the queen, who did not notice the thin strands of gossamer webbing wrapped around his wrists until it was too late. 

When news reached the queen of the hero’s death, he was very sad. He was broken hearted. Because, though few people knew it (least of all the hero) the queen would have given his life to save the hero. The queen would have given the kingdom. And with hero gone the queen had little left to live for. 

The queen took a walk to see the lunatic.


	5. The Friend

Suddenly things began to happen. 

After a month of latency, a month of nothing but shaded windows and cold take-out, my life became a landslide. The whole rest of the tale takes place in twelve days. 

Tuesday, exactly thirty one days after Sherlock’s death, Mycroft came to visit me. I don’t know what he thought about what he found, because that was also the day I finally unraveled. I can remember the feeling, not a snap, but exactly like a skein of yarn bouncing down the stairs unwinding as it goes. 

I was sitting on my bed with Sherlock’s old friend, the skull, in my lap. My mobile was on my desk beside my laptop, turned safely off. It was nine o’clock in the morning and for the first time I didn’t check my messages. For the first time I really believed that there was no point and I might as well chuck the fucker in the bin. 

My blanket was wrapped around my shoulders because the room was chilly.

The skull stared blankly up at me, grinning (maybe you hear the punch-line to a very funny joke as you die and then spend the rest of eternity smiling). I grinned back, stretching out the corners of my mouth. I had read somewhere once that by forcing yourself to smile you can fool your body into feeling happy. 

I didn’t hear the rapping on the door. Or, it being Mycroft, it might be the case that he didn’t knock at all. I looked into the deep sockets of my dehydrated companion and let my smile fall.

“What’s it like being dead?” I asked. 

“John?” Mycroft stood on the other side of the room. Black coat and black umbrella, dark eyes and dark frown. “I came to see... how are you, John?” 

“Fuck off,” I told him. I preferred the skull’s company. The skull hadn’t sold his brother to the devil. Mycroft looked to the floor. 

“Yes, well,” he said. “I’ll see you again in a week. A last favor for my brother.” He turned to leave again.

“Sherlock never wanted favors from you,” I spat. Mycroft paused with his hand on the door, leaning on his umbrella. 

“He did hate me,” he mused. “But I was given the impression that even his ire for me was overshadowed by his… _concern_ for you. See you next week.” He opened the door. 

“I don’t need you checking up on me Mycroft,” I snarled.

“I’m afraid I didn’t ask your opinion,” he said with a glance at the skull. He snapped the door closed behind him.


	6. The Knight

And the queen had many knights, but there was one especially who was loyal and brave and considered the best of what men could be. 

Lestrade, was the knight’s name. The queen called on him after the hero was dead and it was clear that the lunatic was quite useless. 

The knight had hardly been to see the queen before so he was surprised when he was called. But he went dutifully and stood before the queen with curiosity. 

“I have a difficult task for you,” said the queen. The knight knelt before her to listen. “It requires you to break the knight’s code, and the laws of the land. But I have a need that goes beyond codes and laws. Will you help me?” 

“Of course,” said the knight. He saw how haunted the queen’s eyes were. And he had heard about the hero’s death. “What can I do?” he asked. 

The queen almost smiled at him. “I need you to go out into the night and listen,” he said. “I need you to find where the monsters chatter and the snakes whisper and I need you to return with the sun and tell me the things you have heard.” 

So the knight waited for darkness. When the sun had sunk well below the horizon he strapped his weapon to his waist and left his fellows behind. The kingdom was a dangerous place without light and the knight went to the darkest corners, creeping silently and listening. His heart pounded in his throat because, though he was courageous, he was no fool. He had put down enough beasts to know about claws and fangs and that men like him could not escape those things forever. 

The hero had died of nothing more than a spider’s bite.

Horrible laughter and screeching echoed through the shadows. But the knight learned very little, though he crept as close to the evil things as he dared. Then as he was returning, just before dawn, he heard one long, lone howl rise in the distance. 

“What did you hear?” The queen asked the exhausted knight as the sun came through the palace windows and fell streaming across the marble floor. 

“I heard a wolf,” said the knight.


	7. The Mirror

On Wednesday Mycroft dispatched Lestrade to check up on me. 

I don’t think Lestrade was comforted by his visit. I’m afraid I was sinking past the point of lucidity by then. It was almost a deliberate madness. He found me in my bathroom scrubbing the mirror viciously clean. 

I had the skull with me, resting on the back of the toilet next to a long stemmed white rose. 

“Close the door,” I hissed at him when he tried to say hello. He shut the bathroom door with a click and then it was just the two of us and the listening skull in a tiny room. Lestrade closed the toilet and sat down. There was still a little bit of steam in the air from my shower. I hadn’t yet changed out of my bathrobe. 

“Are you alright?” Lestrade asked. 

_That_ , I thought distractedly, _is a stupid question_. 

“I’m pissed,” I answered and threw the sponge in the sink, snatched up a dry hand towel. 

“I can see that,” Lestrade mumbled. He picked up the rose and began to fiddle with it. 

“ _Don’t touch that_ ,” I snapped. He put it back down and folded his hands between his knees. 

“Do you need anything?” Lestrade asked. “Should I call Harry?” 

“No. You should piss off because I am busy.” 

Lestrade licked his lips and then sighed. “ Alright. Just...you shouldn’t spend all your time alone.” He stood.

I looked at the skull through the reflection and gave him a smile that looked demented and strange even to me. 

“I’m not alone,” I said and picked up the sponge to scrub the mirror again.


	8. The Princess

Once there was a princess who spent all her time in a basement with dead people. Her name was Molly Hooper. 

Princess Molly was very good at keeping secrets because she had no one but the bodies to talk to. And even then she didn’t have very much to say; the princess was a better listener than she was a conversationalist. And so, of course, the princess knew many things that other people didn’t. She knew about death and redemption. She knew about cruelty and kindness. She knew about villains and heroes and love and hate. The princess was actually very wise, but it was a precious few that gave her credit for her wisdom because she was so quiet all the time and wasn’t a very skilled story teller. 

After the hero died it got around that the princess had a secret admirer. Every week or so the princess would find a rose amongst the dead. A rose red as blood, woven into the lapel of a corpse as if it had sprung to life there. The people made fun of the princess behind her back (though being such a good listener the princess heard them anyway). They said that only the dead could love someone as quiet as she was. They said that it was a ghost that left the roses. 

The princess knew better. She knew that the dead had no use for roses. And she knew what the roses really meant. 

They meant “Thank you.” 

One day she found there were two roses, both clutched tightly in the rigor-mortis of Mr. River’s folded hands (the princess knew the names of all the dead). One red rose and one white one. 

The white rose wasn’t meant for her. But she was relieved to see it. 

“I’m sorry,” was the message of the white rose. Along with another message that was none of her business, really, but which, because of her wisdom, she couldn’t help but see. 

The princess put the dead to sleep. She closed their eyes and blew out the candles and wrapped up the white rose in a silk scarf so no one would see what she was carrying. 

The princess took a walk to see the lunatic.


	9. The Rose

So far I have written only half of the truth. You may have noticed. It’s a hard habit to break. But the rest is there, in all the things in-between, and if you’re a careful reader you’ll have notice that I left bread crumbs for you to follow. 

Mycroft came to me on a Tuesday, I have said. He found me talking to a skull and thought me out of my head. That Lestrade came on Wednesday and I was cleaning a mirror. That there was rose on the back of the toilet.

You almost have it, don’t you? The taste of it. _It’s about the rose_ , you’re thinking. And you’re right. The story began with Mycroft coming to my door. But the truth began with the rose.

Monday night, before Mycroft came to see me, I had another visitor. 

If she hadn’t come I probably _would_ have gone mad. When she came I was standing in my bare feet in the middle of the floor trying to decide what to do with myself, trying to remember why I had risen in the first place, losing the will to do anything. (Fairy tales are the kind of stories where everyone loses hope early on.) I was dizzy with hunger and felt too sick to eat. I was exhausted and too afraid of the dark to sleep. I was thinking about bridges and rivers and the distance between one and the other. 

There was a knock at my door. (Didn’t I say so?) I shouted for whoever it was to come in. My lights were off. When the door opened I couldn’t see who was standing in the shadows until she spoke. 

“John?” Molly Hooper turned on the lights and crossed the room. She looked anxious and was cradling a silk scarf in her arms. For a moment she just held me in her soft brown eyes. I could see that she was thinking _I’m just in time_. Then, slowly, she unwound the scarf and placed a white rose on my window sill. 

“This came for you,” she said. 

Silence in the universe. 

I swallowed. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my mobile, looked into its dark, dead screen. I took out the battery and dropped it to the floor. Crushed it underneath my heel. I put the phone down on the table beside my laptop. 

“Thank you,” I said to Molly. 

She smiled. Gave me a hug. And went home.


	10. The Lunatic

Once there was a lunatic. 

Who used to be a physician. But he lost his mind to heartbreak. 

That’s what the people said.


	11. The Conversation

“You are such a _bleeding arse_ ,” I told his skull because his idiot face wasn’t around to put my fist into. That was Tuesday morning, if you remember, and Mycroft was descending the stairs to my flat.

I had put the rose in a water glass and it was sitting on my desk by my computer. And because I had finally found the will to open the blinds there was actual sunlight streaming through the window and across the floor, across the desk. The shadow of the rose fell over the dead body of my old mobile.

“Anything would have done, Sherlock,” I said. “I didn’t need a bloody love letter.” 

I curled my lip and dug my fingers into the eye sockets. I _did not_ say out loud, _Why would you keep me guessing_? I knew he’d had a reason, however much it was probably shite. Even he wouldn’t have kept silent out of curiosity or lassitude. Not for this. Not with me. 

The rose said just as much. 

But, with all things being fair, I still couldn’t decide if I would kiss or punch him in the mouth when I when I finally laid my hands on the bastard. All things being fair I thought it not unlikely he would get both. 

“What’s it like being dead?” I asked, since screaming wouldn’t do any good. The skull didn’t answer, being considerably more dead than Sherlock (as it turned out), and tongueless to boot. I frowned at it and then suddenly Mycroft was in the room. We said words around each other, though never really to each other, and then he left. He didn’t see the rose, it was behind him and I didn’t mentioned it. 

Cruel of me, I know. But even at the end of a month I was angry; I thought Mycroft deserved a few more days of self-reflection.

The skull was warm after sitting in my lap for so long. I leaned back against the wall and lifted him up to eye level. “Fuck you,” I mumbled, “in case I hadn’t mentioned it yet.”


	12. The Ghost (Interlude)

_Once there was a ghost. And he thought that the lunatic was being very melodramatic. The ghost had only been dead for a month and he was just trying keeping the lunatic safe. Otherwise the lunatic might have been eaten by the wolves and tigers that worked for the evil spider. As soon as it became clear that the lunatic was a more serious danger to himself than the beasts could be, the ghost sent him a message._

_Furthermore, the ghost thinks these metaphors are asinine._

**Edit:** Well the ghost doesn’t get a say and _THE WRITER_ would just like to point out that he is only keeping with the theme that the ghost set up when he decided to send a rose instead of a _text message_ like a normal person and also the ghost thinks _everything_ is asinine and the writer didn’t ask for his opinion anyway. And by butting in the ghost is screwing up the story and telling it wrong.


	13. The Ghost

Once there was a ghost who couldn’t resist being a dramatic arsehole all the time. It was part of what had gotten him killed in the first place. But despite the fact that there was only a cold stone where his heart had been and a block of ice where his tongue once was, he was worried about the lunatic and knew he had to speak up somehow. He had been watching and could see the way the lunatic was suffering.

And whatever the ghost might try to tell you, he _did_ care.

Now, the ghost was a being with many secrets (you’ve probably already guessed the biggest two), so he needed a confidant. He chose the princess who kept secrets so well. She was also convenient because she spent all day listening to the dead and so she knew how to hear the dead speak. Unlike most people, the princess didn’t need words to understand.

The ghost brought her roses red as blood.

This was because many of the ghost’s secrets were bloody. And because he thought the color suited her lips, which were too small otherwise.

For a month the ghost confided in the princess. And for a month the princess kept his secrets. She didn’t breathe a word. Not to the queen to whom she owned fealty, nor to the lunatic whom she called a friend.

When the time finally came for the ghost to break his silence, he hardly knew what to do. It was ghost’s fault that the lunatic was no longer a physician and he knew that the lunatic would be furious. And it was the ghost’s fault that he hadn’t said anything when he’d had the chance.

He brought a white rose to the princess because he knew she would help him.

And she did. She brought the rose to the lunatic, who _was_ furious, but was also relieved. And when she left the ghost stayed; watching the lunatic and listening to his ramblings.

And the longer he watched the more his cold stone ached. The more he listened the worse his block of ice itched. The ghost stayed until he couldn’t bear the distance anymore and he knew he needed his words back.

He went and stood before the lunatic’s mirror, thinking.


	14. The Writing

That Wednesday (before Lestrade showed up, obviously) I had a fright or two. 

When I stepped out of shower and through the cloud of steam (naked as the day I was born, Sherlock you creepy bloody wanker) there was a message written across my mirror. 

_DULL_ , was all it said. I stared uncomprehending for a long moment before my eyes followed after my thoughts to the door and the room beyond. _What’s like being dead?_

I burst from the bathroom still pulling my robe on. The skull was sitting on the window sill, grinning at that joke again. Except I finally had the punch line. I picked it up and turned it over, found the tiny black microphone nestled just on the left nasal concha.

“YOU FUCKING TWAT!” I knocked the water glass to the floor and spilled the rose. “ _Would it be so difficult to post something? Or pop by just to let me_ …” I stopped. I looked up at the open window (my bathrobe flapping to either side of me) down at the busy street, across at windows, the rooftops. 

Anyone could be watching. 

_Why wouldn’t he just come to see you?_ I asked myself. Too slow, as usual. _Why would he jump off a roof and be dead for a month? Why try to lie to his best friend?_

“Right,” I said and pulled my robe around my stomach. I picked up the rose and took it with me into the bathroom, skull cradled beneath my arm. Then I grabbed the glass cleaner and a new sponge. 

If Sherlock could bust into my flat and leave a message on the mirror as easy as all that, there could be others. People who would know where to look.

I began scrubbing, muttering death threats and nonsense out of the corner of my mouth as I did so. The skull sat there smiling. Listening. 

Lestrade found me just like that.


	15. The Wolf

Once there was a wolf. Yellow eyes and white teeth, nose to the ground. He looked just like you might expect a wolf to look. 

This particular wolf had excellent ears and they were always pricked forward, listening. He could hear the rain falling from the clouds before it hit the ground. He could hear the scratching of important pens behind closed doors; he could hear the shapes of letters as they were written down. He could hear dead men walk and sleeping men die. He could hear the whispers of spiders through the vibrations in the ends of their webs. 

The wolf heard the hero’s last breath from miles away. He heard the creaking of the spider's twitching limbs as he died too. The wolf heard the sounds from the graveyard the next day, the splashing sounds like raindrops. But it was a cloudless day, full moon that night. 

On the dark edges of the city the wolf waited. Smelling the wind and eating small innocent things. He lapped up all the blood to hide his tracks. He watched the progress of the moon with care because there were many things that depended on the lunar cycle and the wolf knew this better than anybody. 

The tides. The crops. The festivals. The madness of men. 

As the moon was rising full again at the beginning of a new month the wolf rose out his shadows at last. 

He took a walk to see the lunatic.


End file.
